Draco's Paranoid Infatuation
by Farfalla
Summary: Draco's got a crush and is acting like an ass about it! (slash.)


Title: Draco's Paranoid Infatuation   
Author: Farfalla   
Website: cosmicduckling.com / ravenclaw   
E-mail: blueberrysnailyahoo.com   
Pairing: Draco likes Snape   
Rating: PG-13?   
Disclaimer: The entire Harry Potter/Hogwarts universe is exclusive property and creation of J. K. Rowlings and will not suffer much from the poking and prodding of our curious collective imaginations. We mean our beloved characters no harm and think that quite possibly they enjoy the variety ;-)

DRACO'S PARANOID INFATUATION

Draco Malfoy, aged fourteen, guiltily checked his reflection in the Slytherin common room mirror. It was time for Double Potions again, and even though he knew that _he_ would be the one doing all the staring, it wouldn't do to not look his absolute best. His blond hair was never as smooth and shiny and glistening as it was when he was headed for the Dungeons for class. 

"Come ON, Malfoy! You don't want to be late for class." Goyle whined. 

"Are you kidding? Malfoy late for Potions?" Crabbe winked at Goyle. "Snape wouldn't be happy with that." The two of them began to guffaw like hungry crows 

"Shut UP!" Draco tossed his head imperiously and checked his bag to make sure he had his books. He usually wrote down everything the Professor said, only half because it made an excuse to hang on his every word. The subject in question was truly as fascinating... as the teacher. 

"Yeah, if you showed up late one day, maybe he'd make you stay after for detention," Crabbe smirked. 

"And make you polish all the supplies... like his pestle, of course!" Goyle seemed stunned with himself at his uncharacteristically clever metaphor. 

"Not another word, you dolts, or I'll have my father make you both fish-food," Draco sneered. 

"Sure, and then we'll tell him how every chance you get, you--" Goyle stopped talking when Draco approached him with both fists cocked. 

Pansy Parkinson's voice called from the hallway. "Are you idiots ever coming to class? I don't want to walk by myself." 

The three Slytherins hurried to join their friend outside the common room.   
  
Draco slid into his seat just before the door at the back of the room came banging open to admit the Potions professor. Professor Snape always entered his classroom with a fierce and furious energy that made some of the Muggle-born students think of a bullet being fired from a revolver. Draco had never seen a gun, as he came from one of an old family of Wizarding purebloods; he had his own ways of appreciating the poetry in Snape's entrance. 

"I don't suppose anyone finished their homework from last class, what with all of yesterday's _excitement_," Snape sneered. 

Draco already had his parchment waiting on the desk and handed it to his professor. The back of his neck started to sweat because he could feel Crabbe and Goyle's leering eyes laughing at him, but he didn't care... Snape gave him a half-smile and nodded silently. If he temporarily suspended all reason, Draco could almost fool himself into thinking that the professor had gazed into his eyes... for but the briefest second.... 

Those dark, brooding, sinister eyes that held so many secrets. An electric shock went through the blond Slytherin. 

Draco's involuntary heavy breathing and other physical manifestations of teenage hormones were cut abruptly short by Hermione Granger's excited fluttering of manuscript on the other side of the room. Apparently she had done the work also-- oh, bother her! When Hermione didn't have her homework done, it was probably the end of the world and the sky had already crashed itself in. 

He carefully watched Snape take the parchment from her hand as she swept messy hair out of a proud little face. If he had ever so much as seen a _hint_ of what could be misconstrued as desire or affection on the Professor's face just then... He realized that he had clenched his fists and relaxed them slowly. THAT particular insecurity was foolishness; he knew how much Snape hated the Gryffindors and loved Slytherin! 

"Professor Snape, I have a question," said Pansy Parkinson. Seductively? Draco's suspicious eyes flitted over to his female friend. Her facial expression was completely innocent and even a bit impatient. Snape listened to her Potions question with an air that was half-bored, half-amused. Draco sniffed the air and thought he smelled something different today. Was Pansy wearing perfume to Potions class? If she had set her sights on Snape, she was much harder competition than the Gryffindor know-it-all. She was beautiful, she was a Slytherin... she was a girl, of course! At this thought, Draco blushed and had to put his head down slightly. Luckily the darkness concealed his fourteen-year-old angst quite effectively. 

Of course, it mightn't be perfume at all, because come to think of it, the smell was more fruity than floral, and there was a bowl of slightly bad bananas taking repose on Snape's desk. Ingredients for today's class, Draco decided. 

No, there was no chance of either that bushy-haired squirrel brainiac or the whiny, gossipping Slytherenne beating him to the post of Teacher's Pet. Draco was Snape's favorite student, no question, and had been since day one. Only HE knew all the answers to those particular questions that Snape cared about the most; only HE held the professor in the highest regard possible and treated him as a demi-god; only HE had the cunning to constantly ask him if he needed help with anything, offering assistance in a sly attempt to gain further grace. 

Draco may not have been the Lover, but he was the Pet, and that was further along than anyone else at least. He smiled smugly and lifted up his eyes for another gaze at Severgoodness. 

"What d'ye suppose the bananas are for?" whispered Ron Weasley to Harry Potter. Being reminded of their existence drove yet another interruption into Draco's Severworship. 

"I don't know," said the Boy Wonder. Draco wanted to punch him every time he opened his mouth. 

Apparently, he was not the only Slytherin in the room who felt animosity towards Harry. Snape whirled around, his cape flying like a clothesline of mourning-dress in a hurricane. "Potter, were you talking in my class?!" He fixed his dark eyes like two laser beams on Harry's face, which had gone slightly green. 

Harry gulped. There was an uncomfortable but not-unusual silence in the room as everyone could tell that Snape was internally preparing his newest harangue against Harry, Gryffindor, and the world in general. Draco stared at him adoringly, hot in anticipation of what he was sure would be a fabulous laugh, delivered by the most sexy man alive, and at the expense of a creature whom Draco found to be thouroughly annoying at all times. 

".... Detention, Potter!! And twenty points from Gryffindor." Thus ended a five-minute diatribe that concluded with Snape stomping manfully back behind his desk and Potter slouched in his seat. Ron looked at Harry sympathetically. Draco was almost drooling with infatuation. He could hear Crabbe and Goyle snickering at each other again but this time he absolutely, positively didn't care. Stupid fools, his friends were. Couldn't recognize total genius, sinister power, utterly melting blackness of eyes.... 

Well, maybe they were just laughing at Potter and Weasely. Nobody was looking at Draco at the moment, anyway. Wait, Snape was! 

All eyes were on Potter but Professor Snape's had met Draco's briefly. They shared a moment of Slytherin pride, only a moment, and then it was gone. "These bananas, class..." And the lecture started and Draco had to write down so much information so quickly that he barely had time to look at Snape at all if he wanted to actually comprehend all of it. No matter, his voice was a thing of beauty rivalling night. Draco fantasized about that voice calling to him in his sleep but then immediately repressed the reaction. No, he _had_ to concentrate on the speckled bananas! Not on other things that were about the same shape... 

UGH. He _had_ to do something about this already. Pushing aside the half of his brain that screamed at him uselessly, "but you're fourteen/male/LuciusMalfoy'sSonhewouldn'teventouchyouforfearthatyourfatherwouldhavehimsackedandthenKILLED...."... he began to think furiously. Bloody bananas anyway. 

He looked around the room for inspiration and his gaze fell distastefully on Potter. Harry looked rather glum because of his upcoming detention. Detention.... stuck in the dungeon, after hours, nobody there... alone with Snape... Bingo! 

Draco's mind worked quickly. He had to go ahead with his plan and get it over with, or else Crabbe and Goyle would interfere on his behalf and wind up with detention also. And that would spoil everything. 

"Looking forward to detention, Potter?" he called out snidely. "You've been under so much pressure lately fighting dragons and competing against seventh-years, I bet you're beginning to wish you'd never snuck your name into the Goblet." 

Harry's face reddened and his brows furrowed. "Be quiet, Malfoy. I didn't put my name in; we've been over this before." He was in a bad mood, which was perfect. 

"You're right, you're too stupid to think of that," taunted Draco further. Oh please Goyle don't look over here and come "help" me, he thought to himself, one eye on his gorillian friend. "Maybe Weasley did it for you, 'cause that's the only birthday present he could afford to give you." 

Harry must have been in a VERY bad mood from Snape's unusually long and creative insult, and just as Draco was counting on, this slur to his best friend's honor drove Potter over the edge. "Why you--" 

In the brief scuffle that followed, Draco managed to plunge Harry's arm completely into the banana-mixture, which during the course of class had been transformed into, of all things, a glassifying potion. "My arm!!!!" howled Harry, pulling his now perfectly transparent glass arm out of the goop. 

"Oh, for heaven's sake," muttered Snape. "Weasely, take Potter to Madame Pompfrey's. And try not to break your arm, Potter... wouldn't do to have any shattered pottery lying about, other people might cut themselves." 

"What about my detention?" Harry asked in a very small voice. 

"Consider a glass arm and a trip to the hospital wing your detention for the day." Snape had had enough of Harry for the day, and welcomed the excuse to get him out of his sight. 

Then, just as expected, he turned his piercing stare back to Draco. Hermione was glaring at Draco also, but he focused his attention completely on Snape. "Malfoy, I'm... disappointed in you. If you MUST defend yourself, do it in a manner that does not destroy twenty-minutes' work of potion-making." He looked sadly at the banana goop. "Detention for you, and... two points from Slytherin." Snape shrugged fatalistically as if to hint, Sorry, guys! That's life. Blame it on Malfoy. 

Draco felt like he had wings. His plan had worked! He would be alone with Snape for a whole hour, in the deep, dark, aromatic recesses of the dungeon... just the two of them... He blissfully ignored Hermione's smirking expression and Crabbe and Goyle's teasing glances. 

He could not _wait_ until the end of class. 

After the interminable, anticipation-filled remainder of class, Draco's detention was finally to be served. All the other students flooded out of the room, but Draco remained in his seat dutifully writing "Memorize Glassifying Potion" in his sea-serpent hide day-planner. He coyly waited until Snape approached him before putting the datebook away and looking up. 

"You will stay here for one hour, precisely," said Snape. Draco nodded. "I will forgive you for turning Potter's arm to glass. Indeed, it was probably a more memorable hands-on demonstration of the potion's effect than those I had planned to perform." He smiled with one molecule of mouth. 

"Do you need me to help you with anything, Professor?" Draco looked up deeply into Snape's eyes without blinking or smiling. If he ever had a fighting chance at this, the time was now and he put his dark-charactered beauty to its fullest advantage. 

"No, thank you, Malfoy, you may stay here and memorize your potions if you like." Snape paused while Draco opened his notebook again. "It isn't often I get a student like you, who really _loves_ the art as I do. I'm glad for that." There was another moment of silence, and then Snape turned full-face and walked back to his desk. 

Draco sat in his seat, studying earnestly and alternatingly his Potions notes and his Potions-master. Ah well, this was not the time. But there would be other times... He remembered how many detentions Harry Potter'd had with Snape with jealously. Suddenly he had a farfetched pang of imagination, wondering with venom if there was more there than met the eye. Snape certainly did pay a lot of attention to Harry Potter... although all of it negative. 

Draco decided that was a silly idea and went back to his work. 

At his desk, Severus Snape rifled through the skimpy pile of homework he had collected at the start of that day's class. They looked unimaginative and boring and even the stupid ones were not entertainingly daft in the slightest. He was glad that Potter wasn't here to make the time even more uncomfortable than it already was. Draco's bizarre actions had done him a service. He had a feeling why Draco was here, and that he had fallen into a very silly and useless trap. Ridiculously, really, and so young at that. Ah, well, no harm done there. If it won him at least one appreciative student, who really _understood_ Potions, finally... 

Wearily his eyes wandered around the room, and his expression changed. In the loneliness of the dark dungeon, in the orange of the firelight and the black of his life, he thought of the one fourteen-year-old he had ever loved, who was also the one fifteen-year-old, sixteen-year-old, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.... 

He wondered what his life would have been like with Lily Evans at his side.


End file.
